This section provides information helpful in understanding the invention but that is not necessarily prior art.
Modern golf balls are typically made with a durable cover. The golf ball may have a two-piece construction with the cover and a one-piece rubber or elastomer core or a multi-piece construction with multiple inner layers selected from rubbers or elastomers, including natural and synthetic rubbers, styrene butadiene, polybutadiene, poly(cis-isoprene), or poly(trans-isoprene) (which is synthetic “balata” and is typically used as a cover material), and hard, thermoplastic materials such as olefin-based ionomer resins. The outer cover may be made from a variety of thermoplastic and thermoset materials, such as olefin-based ionomers, polyamides, polyesters, polyurethanes, and polyureas. Golf balls are also often coated with an abrasion-resistant surface coating, for example a polyurethane coating with a pencil hardness of 3 H or a Sward hardness of more than 40. Such a hard coating typically is formulated to give a glossy appearance and durability to the ball.
The cover hardness may vary depending on the properties desired for the ball. Harder-cover golf balls as a whole produce low spin, and thus longer distance, on driver and long iron shots. However, hard-covered golf balls may not provide the best play for skilled players, who seek to maintain control as well as to achieve maximum distance on tee and fairway shots. A highly skilled golfer may find an advantage with golf balls having a multilayer construction with a low hardness cover and a higher hardness inner layer. This construction can produce low spin off the tee, though not as low as could be had with a harder cover, but higher spin on shorter iron and wedge shots. The ability to control the ball on short irons and wedge shots by putting more backspin on the ball allows for better control of the golf ball when it lands.